


None Like You

by thepinupchemist



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alpha Bucky Barnes, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Avengers Tower, Family, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Mpreg, Nesting, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Omega Steve Rogers, Rutting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-25 01:41:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21348178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepinupchemist/pseuds/thepinupchemist
Summary: They've always chased each other.Post Winter Solider, Bucky goes on the run. Steve follows, Bucky goes into rut, and Steve has to stop chasing. He has to stop chasing -- because now, there's a kid on the way.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 50
Kudos: 1457





	None Like You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xxcabalinaxx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxcabalinaxx/gifts).

**Soundtrack: Firebird – Milky Chance**

_ **None Like You** _

Way back when, Bucky chased Steve to hell and back. In retrospect, it was a very alpha thing of him to do: he chased Steve down and followed him place to place like a moth to flame. He finished Steve’s fights and started a few of his own on Steve’s behalf.

Then the war happened, and Steve chased after Bucky. He wasn’t used to that, but it gave him purpose. His alpha had ripped the world apart for him, so he’d rip the world apart for Bucky right back.

Steve had been nervous about seeing Bucky again after the supersoldier serum changed his body – he was used to being the ideal omega – which he’d hated, for the record. Folks liked waifish, delicate omegas, which he’d been. He’d been that way because he was sick as a dog most of his life. Once, Mrs. Gardiner from apartment 4A complimented Steve on the weight he’d lost.

Bucky had snarled for him: “Thanks, Mrs. G. It’s because he got pneumonia and almost died. Is he prettier almost dead?”

God, Steve loved his alpha.

So he chased his alpha all the way across the Atlantic.

Steve worried that Bucky wouldn’t like him the way that he turned out – so much like an alpha, no longer the thin slip of a thing that everyone in the neighborhood said was a sweet, beautiful little thing: _if only your nose weren’t so crooked, dear, you’d be just lovely._

But Bucky worshiped him. To Bucky, the supersoldier serum didn’t take away his omega, but gave his omega the one thing that he’d wished Steve had all along: his health. There would be no more worrying about getting sick in the winter months, no more torturous heats that ravaged Steve’s body, no more panic that Steve would start a fight that would break his body forever. To Bucky, Steve’s new body was as beautiful as the one before it.

Bucky chased Steve, Steve chased Bucky, and then Bucky followed Steve into the jaws of death. He’d follow his omega anywhere, and that killed him.

Or so Steve had thought, anyway.

The loss of a mate was immeasurable. No one talked about it much, because most widowed mates didn’t make it very long.

It was just like they said. Steve hadn’t lasted, had he?

Except then he did live, and living without Bucky was like living on a world that wasn’t whole anymore. The Avengers didn’t press him about it. The history books talked about the tragedy that was Steve Rogers, the omega that turned the tide of the second world war, the omega that moved mountains to get his alpha back, the omega that put a plane into the ocean when his alpha plummeted to his death.

But then.

_But then_.

In short order, Steve lived and he fought, over and over again, rinse and repeat, just like that.

Then there was the bridge.

Then the mask came off.

Then Bucky smelled Steve.

Then Bucky remembered Steve.

Then Bucky disappeared.

Sam, bless him, offered to help Steve track his alpha down. To his infinite credit, he did. He and Steve ripped the country apart, splintering HYDRA cells and taking down supervillains. Then Bucky’s trail went international, and Sam hugged Steve to him and told him that he couldn’t go.

“I love you, man, but I have a life here,” Sam said. “If it’s an emergency, you call me, but I can’t go running all over the world. You know where to find me if you need me.”

“I understand,” Steve replied. He folded into Sam’s arms. Most alphas that weren’t Bucky smelled not-right. He wanted to edge away from them into clear air, but Sam’s clean alpha scent was a comfort. He never moved on Steve like some alphas had. He just held him close and assured Steve that he was already doing everything that he could to track Bucky down. He could only do his best.

Steve’s heart hung heavy in his chest every time he found a new place that Bucky had been. He would smell the dregs of his alpha’s scent in abandoned buildings turned evil lairs. Sometimes it bled into hotel bedding or the walls of a house he’d been through. Steve would sit on beds and tuck himself against curtains and scent desperately, longing for the times that he and Bucky had laid together skin to skin and lived in one another’s scents.

He took everything he could get, and it wasn’t much. It wasn’t enough.

Until London.

Steve had tracked Bucky’s path through corrupt politicians and weasley billionaires. He researched as much as he fought. He knew now that Bucky was trying fill in the empty holes of his past. There were pieces missing and it broke Steve’s heart to know that all Bucky wanted was to _know_. He wasn’t trying to rewrite his past of absolve himself of his sins. He was trying to find out what they did to him.

In a hotel room in a questionable part of London, Steve expected another trace. A clue. A shred. Some little thing that he would scrutinize and run past Natasha or Tony or Sam until one of them picked up something new to follow.

To chase, because Steve would chase Bucky forever.

But in that hotel room, instead of the shadow of Bucky’s scent, the full force of alpha rut hit him like a brick wall the moment that he stepped up onto the third floor. A handful of hotel employees were hurriedly evacuating everyone down the staircases and through the fire escapes – an alpha rut this strong meant the potential for violence. People rushed by half-dressed, rolling suitcases in hand and noses scrunched up.

Steve could smell his own omega scent slicing through the thick of it. One of the hotel employees paled at the clash of aromas and said, “Sir, you can’t – _oh_.”

Even in his civilian clothing, he carried his shield. There was no mistaking who Steve was. He laid a hand on the woman’s shoulder and said, “You keep getting everyone off the floor. I’ll take care of it.”

Whether or not she knew that it was Bucky inside that room, stinking up the entire third floor of a hotel in London, Steve couldn’t say.

Steve broke the lock on room 354 with the edge of his shield.

When he stepped inside, Bucky was on his feet with a knife in his hand.

But when he saw Steve, he dropped the blade on the carpet. He didn’t make a move for him, but stood perfectly still, gray-blue eyes wide. His pupils expanded and his nostrils flared, but he didn’t budge. Any average alpha in rut would have pounced the moment that Steve walked through the door. He would already be pinned to the wall.

“Steve,” Bucky rasped. He looked surprised by the sound of his own voice.

“Bucky,” Steve replied. “You’re in rut. Sit down.”

Bucky’s eyelids fluttered. He stumbled back at Steve’s gentle command, bouncing against the hotel mattress. “I don’t feel good, Steve. Everything hurts.”

Steve lowered the shield. It landed on the ground with a metallic thunk. Bucky flinched at the sound, but he stayed still on the bed, eerily still. Steve hovered near, but he didn’t touch, no matter how badly he wanted to do it. Quietly, he asked, “Do you want me to help you take care of it?”

“Don’t know.”

“What do you usually do for your ruts?”

Bucky’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t open his eyes. “Don’t know,” he repeated. “This is the first one I can remember in…I don’t know. It hurts.”

God, what would HYDRA have had to do to his body to put off a rut for that long?

Some of Steve’s distress must have made it to his scent, because Bucky whimpered.

“Shh,” Steve said. “Can I touch you?”

Bucky nodded.

Were they twenty-two in a shitty apartment in Brooklyn, Steve might have gone right for the dick. In the twenty-first century, he simply threaded his fingers through Bucky’s long hair and stroked. A shudder wracked Bucky’s body, violent enough that Steve’s hand stilled in his hair. He asked his alpha, “Do you want me to stop?”

Only then did Bucky open his eyes. “No, Steve, that’s the damn problem. I never want you to stop.”

“I don’t really see a problem with that.”

Bucky frowned up at him. “I’m not the same alpha as I used to be,” he hedged.

“That’s okay. I’m not the same omega that I used to be,” Steve replied. “I’d still like to help you with the rut, if that’s okay with you.” That wasn’t exactly his plan for the day – he’d thought he’d walk into an empty room, disappointed again, sniffing the curtains or the bedspread like that would bring Bucky back to him.

Another shiver rolled through Bucky’s body. The scent of alpha arousal sharpened. At it, Steve’s body responded. He felt himself get wet in his jeans. His body was doing everything that it was supposed to do when faced with a mate in rut, and his head swam from the force of it. Steve wished he could take care of this with his head on straight, but he’d never been able to get a grip on his control around Bucky.

“Buck?” Steve urged, scratching his fingernails against Bucky’s scalp. “I’m not going to do anything without your permission. I want to help, but I’m not going to take advantage of you.”

A long whine cracked out of Bucky. Steve didn’t know how far along in his rut he was – if Bucky had come to this hotel room to ride it out, or if the onset had been sudden. He did know that Bucky was sweating, that his breath came out quicker than it would normally, that an erection tented the front of his jeans.

“Okay,” Bucky agreed. “I don’t really – I can only remember some things. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore.”

“That’s all right,” Steve assured him. He pulled his hand out of Bucky’s hair, and Bucky made a noise of complaint, leaning upward to chase the touch. Steve shushed him and went on soothing: “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere. I’m just gonna take our clothes off, okay?”

Bucky didn’t do any talking. Back before the ice, Bucky was a talker. His rut or Steve’s heat, or hell, all the times outside of those too, Bucky told Steve all the dirty things that he wanted to do, that he was going to do, that he wanted to try. He’d let it all out in an accent that thickened when he got hot and bothered.

But now, Bucky quietly let Steve undress him. The only move he made was when he turned his head to kiss the back of Steve’s hand.

That one small show of affection sent Steve flying. He’d wanted to touch Bucky again for so long – the fact that he got to have this again made him sad and grateful and horny all at once. He scrabbled with his clothes in a way he hadn’t with Bucky’s. Undressing Bucky had been reverent, so much so that Steve almost forgot how desperately he wanted to be close to his alpha.

Bucky watched with heat behind his eyes, but he didn’t touch. Whether that was out of respect or he was waiting for permission or something else entirely, Steve couldn’t say.

Every other time that Steve had helped Bucky through a rut, he’d been on Steve the moment that the signs began. He’d nuzzle Steve’s neck and call him pretty. He’d lick along the mating bite, would stick his hands down Steve’s pants and get him just as bothered. When he’d gotten Steve hard and wet, he’d manhandle him into the place that he wanted him. He’d put Steve on his stomach or lift him up to ride up on top.

Steve got the feeling that he was in the driver’s seat this time.

“How d’you want me, Buck?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I just want you. I want you real bad.”

“I know,” Steve said, running his hand through Bucky’s hair again, petting him.

Steve tried not to stare, but he couldn’t help it. Bucky was beautiful. He’d always been beautiful, but now there was an edge to it, something violent. A strip of light from between the curtains streamed out and glinted off his metal arm. Hair was growing into places it used to be on his thighs and chest, though it was short – newer growth. In between his legs, his alpha cock jutted up. Thick and wet at the tip, it rested against his abdomen.

Steve wanted to taste it, so he did.

Salt and musk burst over Steve’s palate when he ducked in to lick against the head of Bucky’s erection.

Bucky’s hips jerked up, and he groaned. “M’gonna – I think I’m gonna lose it, honey. I’m trying real hard to keep still, I swear –”

_Honey_.

Steve could cry. He missed the low rumble of Bucky’s voice in his ear calling him honey and baby. He didn’t realize how much until he heard the word again.

“You don’t have to keep still,” said Steve. “You’re in rut – you can do whatever you want with me. I trust you.”

“I don’t trust me,” Bucky protested.

“Well, then, I guess I’ll just have to trust you enough for the both of us.”

Bucky surged up. He gripped Steve’s waist, heaved him up, and tossed him onto the mattress. He crawled over Steve, surrounding Steve with his limbs.

Then, he lowered his head and stuck his nose in Steve’s neck. Steve whined. This close, Bucky’s scent invaded all his senses. He remembered how badly he wanted to always live in Bucky’s scent, thought about how much he had missed this, and how much he never wanted it to end. He cupped the back of Bucky’s head with both palms, cradling, and let himself make all the desperate noises that he used to for his alpha.

When the flat of Bucky’s tongue pressed against Steve’s mating bite, Steve’s hips twitched up of their own accord. Their cocks slid together, a little slick from precome, but not nearly slick enough to be what either of them wanted.

Bucky gasped, his breath hot against Steve’s throat.

“Steve, I need –”

“_I know. _Whatever you want. You can have whatever you want.”

An alpha growl rattled the windows. Bucky pulled up and onto his knees, feverish eyes searching Steve’s naked body. Starting with his hands in Steve’s hair, he touched everywhere that he could reach. He traced the shape of Steve’s ears. He skated over the crooked curve of Steve’s nose. When his hands fell on Steve’s pecs, thumbs pressing into his nipples, Steve moaned.

“The curves on you,” Bucky murmured, so much like his past self that Steve’s eyes burned.

Bucky frowned. “What? What is it? Why are you crying? Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” Steve told him. “I just love you.”

That gave Bucky pause.

“I love you too,” he said, eyes wide, like he couldn’t believe what he’d said.

Steve smiled, and something about that spurred Bucky into action. He ran his hands along Steve’s sides, pausing to paw at his hips before he closed his metal fist over Steve’s cock and gave it an experimental tug. Steve gasped.

“You’re beautiful,” Bucky said. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Yes you fucking do,” Steve grit out, but it was hard to think in the cloud of Bucky’s scent, with Bucky’s hand on his cock, playing with Steve like he had all the time in the world to do it. God knew they never knew how much time they really had.

Bucky released his erection. He moved on to hitch Steve’s legs up, to bend them at the knee and brush his knuckles over the backs of Steve’s thighs. Cool, metal fingers pressed against Steve’s entrance, and Steve jumped at the sensation. Then, he melted into the pillows and moaned.

At the sound, his alpha’s control finally slipped. Bucky pressed his fingers inside of Steve. He felt along the inside of him, stretching and checking, but only in the most cursory manner – only enough to know that Steve would be comfortable when he fucked him.

Bucky bent his nose into Steve’s neck again, and in one certain movement, he sheathed his body in Steve’s.

Sensation overwhelmed Steve. He hadn’t been with anyone since he came out of the ice. He’d had one experimental heat, but it was awful, even with modern toys and hands that didn’t tire out the way they would have before the serum. After that single fiasco of a biological function, he asked Dr. Cho to find a way to synthesize suppressants that could withstand the supersoldier serum.

Steve missed this. He coiled his legs around Bucky’s waist like he’d done at least a hundred times before, but for the first time in this century.

“Shit, Steve,” Bucky cursed, voice muffled beneath the blade of Steve’s jaw.

“I got you,” he promised, and stroked Bucky’s hair again. Bucky seemed to like that a lot.

The steel grasp that Bucky had had on his control vanished. The moment that he withdrew and slammed back into Steve’s body, it seemed he couldn’t stop. He rolled upward, pinned Steve by the shoulders, and fucked. He drove into Steve with the kind of intensity that should have been expected from the start – whether the serum or HYDRA conditioning had schooled Bucky into keeping his head screwed on during a rut, it was a hard thing to break.

God, shit, and fuck. Steve’s body accommodated his alpha fast, but he still felt more full than he had in forever. A toy was nothing compared to the warmth and weight of his mate, of the rigid length inside him, filling up his senses. Steve’s head swam.

“You feel so good,” Bucky managed.

“So do you.”

Alpha pleasure rumbled through the room, a sound and a smell all at once. Bucky always had loved taking care of Steve. Once upon a time, Steve resented that. He didn’t need to be taken care of by virtue of being an omega, but he’d come around to wishing he had that again. His chest ached at Bucky setting aside his own need, even in rut, to put his lips on Steve’s neck and nipples and everywhere his mouth could reach.

Everywhere except Steve’s mouth.

“Can you –” Steve paused. He didn’t know if Bucky was taking requests.

“Can I what?”

“Kiss me,” Steve whispered.

“Ah, shit,” said Bucky. “I shoulda done that to start with. Sorry, honey.” And then he did it, lips drawing Steve close. He sucked Steve’s lower lip into his mouth, and when they opened to each other, their tongues rolled together, filthy and perfect.

The slap of skin on skin echoed in the room. Bucky’s strength wobbled the bed, and thank God hotel bed headboards were attached to the wall, otherwise they would have broken something by now. The mattress protested enough as it was, springs squeaking as Bucky drilled into Steve. Slick squelched between their bodies, enough that Steve’s thighs were sticky from it.

He clung to his alpha, digging his fingers into Bucky’s shoulders. He wished they could be closer, even though he knew that wasn’t possible – this was as close as an alpha and an omega got, with Bucky deep inside Steve, losing his grip on reality as the rut seized control.

Then, Bucky’s knot began to press out against Steve’s insides. His intense thrusts died into a dirty a grind, until his knot locked inside and Steve felt the wet warmth of Bucky coming inside him.

Bucky let his forehead fall against Steve’s. His eyes lost some of the desperate confusion of rut, and he sighed.

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he said.

“Yeah, pal, I figured.”

“I didn’t mean to use you.”

“You didn’t use me, Buck. We’re mates. We’re supposed to help each other.”

“I used you.”

Steve rolled his eyes. He didn’t bother arguing. Despite history’s retelling of his life wherein he was the stubborn one and Bucky was the one that accommodated him, the truth was that they were both stubborn as all hell. Bucky was digging his heels in – fine. Steve could allow that. He didn’t think Bucky had been allowed to be obstinate for far too long. He could make space for it.

After Bucky’s knot went down, Bucky disappeared into the bathroom to shower.

Steve’s heart started beating faster – he wondered how long Bucky would stay. He wondered if Bucky would disappear now that he’d taken the edge off of his rut.

He forced himself to stop thinking that way. He called room service, told them he understood it was unsafe for them to bring food up to the floor, and asked if he could come downstairs to pick it up. They allowed it, and when he showed up stinking of Bucky and slick in his civilian clothes, the beta manning the front desk blurted, “Is Bucky Barnes in rut upstairs?”

Steve frowned. “Son, that’s not really your business.”

“Sorry. Captain America. Sir. If that’s him up there, can you tell him that I’m a big fan?”

An amused sound bubbled out of him before he could stop it. “Will do, kid.”

The next several days passed in this same manner. Steve made sure that they had food and water, and they took care of each other. He petted Bucky and let him explore, gave him all the things that he asked for and told him how much he loved him. For a brief period of time, Steve thought that maybe Bucky might stay. Maybe being together like this would convince him, finally, that being with Steve was a safe place to be.

But Bucky’s rut passed.

Steve went to sleep curled around his alpha’s back.

He woke up to an empty room. The only thing that Bucky had left behind was a red henley, forgotten in a heap under the bed.

The chase was on again.

**

Or it would have been, maybe, if Steve didn’t get to feeling funny. He followed clues and went back to finding traces of his mate in long-abandoned places. Perhaps spending Bucky’s rut with him should have eased the ache, but if anything, the hurt was worse. He wanted Bucky now more than ever before.

The hurt turned to desperation, and everything came to a head on one fateful morning.

Natasha happened to be in the neighborhood in, of all places, Florida. When Steve set up shop in one of SHIELD’s old safehouses, she appeared without warning, and being that it was Natasha, she showed up at the single most inconvenient moment.

Steve had his cheek stuck to the toilet in the bathroom. He’d been…unwell. He suspected a HYDRA virus – days ago, Steve prowled an underground facility that Bucky ripped through days before. He checked every room, pressed some buttons, and ended up with a faceful of something. If it was powerful enough, it could worm its way in his system despite the serum.

He figured he had a couple days of feeling shitty ahead of him.

“What the hell happened to you?”

Steve groaned and peeled his forehead off of the toilet seat. At the bathroom door, Natasha stood in a dark wig, her eyes smoky and her lips red. She was wearing a cocktail dress, and had on some kind of pheromone spray – though she was an omega, she did everything she can to minimize her scent. The scent of fake omega pheromones made him gag, and he vomited again.

Steve wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He explained, “HYDRA virus, I think. Should clear up soon. You smell gross, by the way.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not _lying_, Nat,” Steve protested.

Her brows drew tight together, and her eyes scanned him from tip to toe, in that eerie way she had.

“Did you find Barnes? And do not lie to me. I mean it.”

Steve took too long to respond.

Natasha threw up a hand. “Were you planning on telling any of us, or was that on a need-to-know basis?”

“I didn’t think it was relevant,” Steve said.

“Sure, yeah, finding the guy you’re looking for is definitely irrelevant,” Natasha snarked, but as she took him in, her gaze softened. “Steve, what happened?”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Steve. What. Happened.”

Steve made a helpless gesture. “He went into rut. He’s my mate. Was I supposed to leave him hanging?”

Natasha smeared a hand over the bottom half of her face. With it, her red lipstick went across her cheek. “Have you considered the possibility that you might be pregnant?” she said, voice quiet.

Steve went very still. He counted the weeks back in his head, and everything he knew about pregnancy flashed across his brain like a flipbook. Bucky’s rut had been almost six weeks ago. If Steve were pregnant, this was a downright average time to get morning sickness.

“Can I scent you?” Natasha asked, when he didn’t speak. “I should be able to smell it, if you are.”

Using the toilet seat as leverage, Steve wobbled onto his feet. He mumbled something about brushing his teeth first, and Natasha waited patiently as he did. When he turned back toward her, she stepped into his arms, leaned up, and put her nose in his neck.

It was an intimate thing – scenting always was. Steve couldn’t help but fold into her, gathering Natasha in his arms.

“Steve,” she said, and from the tone of her voice, he already knew.

He’d grown up so sick that Steve didn’t think this would ever be a possibility.

So what the hell was he supposed to do now?

**

If Steve wanted to take care of this baby, as much as his heart protested, he couldn’t keep chasing Bucky. He couldn’t keep bashing in supervillain skulls and jumping into the line of fire, not with an entire other person cooking up inside him.

Steve would have showed up on Sam’s doorstep were it not for the fact that Sam’s house was utterly unsecured, and would not withstand the needs of a pregnant supersoldier.

That, and the scents of other alphas started putting Steve off. He could mingle for a while – Sam was one of the best friends that anyone could ever ask for, and he’d never give that up just because he couldn’t handle an alpha musk that wasn’t Bucky’s – but he couldn’t live in it.

So Sam and Natasha provided moral support and brought him to the safest place since SHIELD fell, a place firmly in the hands of another omega. Someone safe. Theoretically, anyway. Steve didn’t know how Tony was going to take any of this, but he suspected there would be gloating.

They drove in through the secure entrance to Avengers Tower, where Steve had only ever crashed for a night or two at a time, and not often. The elevator inside took them directly into Tony’s lab, where they found him with goggles pushed up on his head and a bowl of cereal in his hands.

Through a mouthful of Froot Loops, Tony greeted, “To what do I owe the honor, Dream Team?”

Steve opened his mouth, but then closed it again. How hard could it be to explain that he had a baby on the way and he needed the securest place he could find to wait it out? He needed, above anything else, for his and Bucky’s baby to be in the safest hands possible.

“Uh, earth to Cap?” Tony said, and snapped his fingers.

“I need someplace secure to stay for a while,” Steve said.

Tony made a face. “Okay? That’s why I built everyone suites? It’s all yours?”

“No, I mean –” Steve stopped. He inhaled. “I might need extra security.”

Just say it, Rogers.

“Tony, I’m pregnant.”

Tony dropped his cereal. Milk and Froot Loops splattered onto the ground of the workshop, and the plastic bowl rolled away to parts unknown. “What? How?” he demanded.

“The usual way,” Steve replied, and pressed his knuckles into his eyes, already exhausted.

“With Robocop?”

“Yeah.”

“Is he around the corner, or?” Tony wheeled his chair through his cereal mess as though to search for Bucky.

“He’s not here,” Steve said.

The thing that was awful about scents was that they gave your emotions away. Some people had surgery on their glands and other people popped pills, all the name of dampening their scents. When Steve was little and sick, he didn’t give off quite as strong a smell, and now, as a healthy man, he wished that he had that back.

Because, even as he schooled his expression into something stoic, Steve’s scent soured. He knew, despite his best efforts, that he smelled like heartbreak, like devastation, like lonely omega, and all the worst kinds of things.

Tony coughed and rubbed his nose on the sleeve of his AC/DC t-shirt. “Christ, Cap,” he said, but he didn’t needle as much as Steve expected him to. “I’ll beef up my security tech. Move your shit in whenever you want.”

So that was what Steve did. He didn’t have many belongings. Other than his clothing, he only brought a box of books, a sketchbook, and a few cups he’d bought at an antique store. Suddenly, the bareness of what he had seemed wrong – he wanted to build a better nest and create a homier territory to bring his little one into.

He had plenty of money, and now, he had plenty of time.

Steve used everything he had. He worked with Tony to secure systems and reinforce the windows and walls of his apartment. He tried to put Bucky out of his mind and focus on the present, and the future that he wanted to create for his kid. Bucky might not be a part of Steve’s future, but this baby certainly would be, and they deserved everything from Steve.

He bought furniture. He decorated. Steve gathered things that he liked and surrounded himself with them. He bought an obscenely expensive nesting chair – back before the war, folks mostly made these things themselves with whatever they could find. Steve’s ma said that his dad built her a spot next to their stove out of brick, more like a platform than anything else, but a special place.

_All a nest needs is a special place, Steven_.

Steve lined the nest with his favorite blankets. He’d taken to collecting them, which he knew was one hundred percent a pregnant omega thing, but he didn’t care. He liked the soft ones and the pretty ones, and took care to arrange them just-so in his nesting chair. Right on the top edge, where he could rest his head, Steve draped Bucky’s henley, the one he’d left in the hotel room in London.

He faced the chair so that it looked out over the city, and as his abdomen went from being ridged to soft to swelling out, Steve stopped sleeping in his bed and moved to the nest entirely. He laid his cheek on the red henley. He’d slept on it so much that didn’t really smell like Bucky anymore, but it would have to be enough.

On a brisk morning, Steve bundled up in a sweater and his coat to grocery shop. He was big enough that no amount of clothing would disguise the pregnancy, but he didn’t mind. No one expected Captain America to be pregnant, so he got away with throwing on some sunglasses and calling it good when he waddled out of the Tower and down the block.

Tony offered to have things ordered to the apartment, but Steve needed to get out sometimes. Being so sedentary made him antsy.

The bagger eyed Steve’s arms, and then his belly, when he shouldered four bags of groceries by himself. She looked like she wanted to ask where his alpha was, but unlike some people, she bit back the question. Instead, she asked, “You all good to carry those by yourself?”

Steve made an appropriate show of being slightly out of breath and said, “I’m just down the street, ma’am. I’ll be fine.”

Besides, he was pretty motivated by the promise of the potato chips once he got home.

Only, when he got home, something didn’t smell right. It wasn’t that there was an unfamiliar scent, but the absence of one – and his door was a little bit open, not enough that anybody would notice but him.

“JARVIS,” Steve said, “who’s in my apartment?”

JARVIS was silent. Steve furrowed his brow at the ceiling.

“Sergeant Barnes, sir,” JARVIS replied, after far too long a time.

Steve, miraculously, did not drop his groceries. He kicked open the door and forced himself to duck into the kitchen to put the bags on the counter before he approached the figure beside his nesting chair. There was no way he hadn’t heard Steve’s exchange with JARVIS or Steve banging around, but he didn’t move.

In front of the kitchen cabinets, Steve inhaled, exhaled, and steeled himself. He turned the corner.

Silhouetted by the morning light, Bucky ran his hand over the top edge of Steve’s nest. He reached for the henley as though to pick it up, and Steve exclaimed, “Don’t touch that!”

Well, damn. He didn’t mean to say that out loud.

Bucky turned.

“You stopped chasing me,” said Bucky.

Steve stared at him.

“I started to get worried about you,” Bucky went on.

Steve spread his arms out. “As you can see, I am fine, Bucky. You can stop worrying.”

“Steve, c’mon.”

“What do you want me to say? I wasn’t going to catch up with you unless you wanted me to. Now I got the kid to think of. I can’t do any more chasing.”

“I wish you’d found a way to tell me.”

“If you didn’t make it so damn hard, maybe that would have been in the cards,” Steve replied mildly. “Why are you here?”

“I told you. I got worried.” Bucky shuffled in place. “And I missed you. Look, I spent a lot of time not knowing where home is. Maybe I shoulda figured it out sooner, but it’s here – with you. I was hoping it’s not too late to come home.”

Steve made a tiny wounded sound. He flew forward, framed Bucky’s face with his hands, and checked him over. He looked healthy. He looked like he’d been eating well. He had a bandage on one brow, but the serum had already healed whatever had been under under it.

“It’s never too late for you to come home,” Steve told him, and swayed in for a kiss.

Bucky tasted like mint. Like he’d planned to kiss Steve. At the thought, Steve smiled into the kiss, and Bucky laughed a little.

“Can I take your coat off?” Bucky asked.

“I’m too bloated for makeup sex, Buck.”

Bucky snorted. “Nah, you idiot, I wanna see the baby.”

“You’re gonna have to wait another couple months for that, pal.”

“Very funny.”

Steve let Bucky pull off the coat. He’d thrown on one of his softer sweaters this morning – pregnancy made every sensation all weird and keen, and keeping comfortable was a guess at best, but soft things were usually the right call. Bucky ran his hands over it, over the sleeves first, then over Steve’s chest, and finally over the curve of the growing kiddo.

“You find out if it’s a boy or a girl yet?” asked Bucky.

“I wanna be surprised.”

Bucky hummed. He laced his fingers in Steve’s and tugged him along, around the edge of the nesting chair. He nudged Steve into it, but when Bucky made to climb inside himself, Steve cleared his throat.

Bucky frowned. “What?”

Steve raised his brows and pointed to Bucky’s boots.

But once Bucky had shucked them, he allowed his alpha into the nest. Whatever Bucky had used to mute his scent had begun to fade at the edges, and the cinnamony aroma of content alpha crept out in its place. Steve scooted over, crunching into a ball, and leaning into Bucky. He instructed, “Pull the blanket with the zigzags over us.”

Bucky obeyed, an amused sort of look on his face.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do if I don’t run,” he admitted.

Steve nuzzled Bucky’s neck. He indulged, nosing into the long-healed bite he’d given Bucky in the thirties.

“You can help raise your kid, for one,” Steve said. “Two? We’ll figure out the rest of that shit. Don’t go borrowing trouble.”

“You sound like your ma.”

“Good,” Steve told him. “If I’m half the omega my mom was, then our kid’s gonna turn out just fine.”

Curled together in Steve’s nest, they watched the city crawl with late morning activity. Steve was bloated and overwrought, and Bucky looked antsy, but they were together. Impossibly together, against all odds, in a future that Steve couldn’t have imagined up in his wildest dreams.

He couldn’t wait to find out what else he hadn’t imagined yet.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a commission fic! If you'd like to commission a fic for yourself, there's a little bit of a wait, but you can contact me on Twitter @thepinupchemist. If you want to follow me, I post a lot about comics, writing my book, and selfies. Thank you for reading!


End file.
